With many thanks to Pete Weiss – everyone should read this FAQ by a tax attorney will help to prevent costly errors when claiming income distribution during retirement – “If you have an IRA, you may have heard the term “required beginning date” or “RBD.” This is an important date that every IRA owner should… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Financial System
Bribery, Kickbacks, and Self-Dealing: An Overview of Honest Services Fraud and Issues for Congress
CRS report via FAS – Bribery, Kickbacks, and Self-Dealing: An Overview of Honest Services Fraud and Issues for Congress, January 30. 2019. “As the trials of Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos illustrate, corruption among high-profile public officials continues to be a concern in the United States. Likewise, recent examples abound of powerful executives in the… Continue Reading
U.S. wealth concentration returns to levels last seen during the Roaring Twenties
NBER Working Paper Series: Global Wealth Inequality , Gabriel Zucman, Working Paper 25462, January 2019. “This article reviews the recent literature on the dynamics of global wealth inequality. I first reconcile available estimates of wealth inequality in the United States. Both surveys and tax data show that wealth inequality has increased dramatically since the 1980s,… Continue Reading
There’s No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
Opinion – Wired: “…What blockchain does is shift some of the trust in people and institutions to trust in technology. You need to trust the cryptography, the protocols, the software, the computers and the network. And you need to trust them absolutely, because they’re often single points of failure. When that trust turns out to… Continue Reading
Executive Branch Ethics and Financial Conflicts of Interest: Disqualification
Via FAS: Executive Branch Ethics and Financial Conflicts of Interest: Disqualification, CRS Legal Sidebar, January 31, 2019 Continue Reading
Cisco 2019 Data Privacy Benchmark Study
Cisco newsroom: “Organizations worldwide that invested in maturing their data privacy practices are now realizing tangible business benefits from these investments, according to Cisco’s 2019 Data Privacy Benchmark Study. The Study validates the link between good privacy practice and business benefits as respondents report shorter sales delays as well as fewer and less costly data… Continue Reading
Investigative report – IBM eliminated more than 20,000 workers 40 and above
ProPublica – As it scrambled to compete in the internet world, the once-dominant tech company cut tens of thousands of U.S. workers, hitting its most senior employees hardest and flouting rules against age bias. “As the world’s dominant technology firm, payrolls at International Business Machines Corp. swelled to nearly a quarter-million U.S. white-collar workers in the… Continue Reading
Corruptions Perceptions Index 2018
“The 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released today by Transparency International reveals that the continued failure of most countries to significantly control corruption is contributing to a crisis of democracy around the world. “With many democratic institutions under threat across the globe – often by leaders with authoritarian or populist tendencies – we need to… Continue Reading
The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2019 to 2029
“CBO regularly publishes reports presenting projections that indicate what federal deficits, debt, revenues, and spending—and the economic path underlying them—would be for the current year and for the next 10 years if existing laws governing taxes and spending generally remained unchanged. This report is the latest in that series. Deficits. In CBO’s projections, the federal… Continue Reading
The Effects of the Partial Shutdown Ending in January 2019
“CBO has estimated the effects of the five-week partial shutdown of the government that started on December 22, 2018, and ended on January 25, 2019. This report presents CBO’s findings, which include the following: CBO estimates that the five-week shutdown delayed approximately $18 billion in federal discretionary spending for compensation and purchases of goods and… Continue Reading
20 percent of Americans have no emergency savings
Axios: “Nearly 20% of Americans surveyed say they have zero savings in case of emergency, a recent survey by bankrate.com reports. Why it matters: With the jobs outnumbering the jobless, a lowering unemployment rate and wages trickling upward, Americans theoretically should have more money to put away for a rainy day fund. If an economic… Continue Reading
Towards a Reskilling Revolution: Industry-Led Action for the Future of Work
World Economic Forum: “The cost of reskilling the 1.4 million US workers likely to lose their jobs as a result of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and other structural changes over the next decade will largely fall on the government, with the private sector only able to profitably absorb reskilling for 25% of at-risk workers. This… Continue Reading
